Psithyra’s eyes cracked open, which she instantly regretted. She felt weak and hungry, and the light that was hitting her eyes didn’t do much to alleviate the feeling. She lay still, taking stock of her surroundings. A few moments of observation, she knew, could spell the difference between success and failure.
She was lying down on a sort of thin mattress. It smelled like it was stuffed with hay. So she wasn’t back at the spa, then. This only left one other possibility. She had been caught.
Psithyra did not panic. She knew the layout of these cells, and there was no chance of her being able to break out without some outside assistance, and none was coming. She could, however, wait for three days. If she was to die in here, Canterlot would die with her. A small smirk flitted over her face as she sat up.
Now this was a familiar sight. She was back in the dungeons, where she had freed Chrysalis from… how long ago had that been? There was nopony at the warden’s desk, and she had no inclination to waste her energy shouting for one.
Instead she leaned back and inspected herself and her surroundings. Her armor had been removed, along with the empty bandoliers of knives. The wounds she had received from the Eclipse guards had been bandaged up with clean strips of white linen.
Psithyra pushed herself off the cot and examined the inside of the cell. It was roughly cube-shaped with a barred door, and solid metal all around everywhere else. There was a slot where she assumed food would be pushed in, but otherwise it was unremarkable. The only unusual aspect was that the entire cell was bound, and no magic could be cast inside, including her native changeling magic.
After this cursory examination, Psithyra went back to sitting on the bed, thinking. She had no idea what time it was, but judging by the amount of pain that was coming from under her bandages, not a lot of time had elapsed from when she had been detained to now. Changeling wounds were quick to heal, so the fact that she was still sore must mean that not one day had elapsed. Probably not even twelve hours.
As Psithyra sat there considering her current situation, she heard the door to the dungeons open and the noise of hoofsteps approaching.
Two guardsponies came into view. One of them she recognized as the one who had tried to stop her by lowering the castle’s portcullis. The other one was an Eclipse guard, from the solar division.
They stopped in front of Psithyra’s cell. The changeling princess did not move, staring dispassionately at the ponies as if they were an interesting painting in a museum.
“So, you’re awake, are you?” The Eclipse guard asked.
Psithyra said nothing, but gave a little roll of her eyes as if to say ‘obviously’.
If the Eclipse guard was annoyed, he didn’t show it. “Do you know where you are?” He pressed.
Psithyra was silent.
“You’re in the Canterlot Castle holding cells,” The Eclipse guard told her. “Don’t think of trying to escape, because you can’t.”
Psithyra held up one hoof and rolled it around, as if to say ‘Get on with it’.
“Not very talkative, are you?”
The look that Psithyra gave him could not have been any more plain.
“Well, fine, be that way,” the Eclipse guard shrugged. “Captain Frigid Night, I’m placing you in charge of watching this prisoner. Make sure she doesn’t do anything shady.”
“Yes, sir,” Frigid Night saluted. “You can count on me.”
The Eclipse guard nodded and left the dungeon. Psithyra sniffed and adjusted her position to be more comfortable. Meanwhile, Frigid went to the desk that the jailer had been occupying and sat behind it. The changeling princess noticed that her suit of armor had been placed on top of the table, though her twinblade was missing.
“You’ve caused quite a lot of trouble for us,” Frigid said as he settled in behind the desk. “I don’t suppose I can get your name for the record?”
Psithyra glared at him and turned up her nose, in a clear display of disdain and defiance. Frigid didn’t seem disappointed. He picked up Psithyra’s helmet and gave it a careful look.
“You know, if you cooperate with us, you’ll probably get a lighter sentence,” he continued. “You’re quite big for a changeling. Not like the ones we saw at the royal wedding at all.”
Psithyra refused to speak. If this pony wanted to waste his breath trying to start a conversation with her, she was more than happy to let him. However, inside Psithyra was brimming with cold satisfaction, knowing that in three days, all the city was going to come crashing down around the ponies’ ears once all the blackmail and scandal reports were made public. All she had to do was wait.
And she was a very patient changeling. One would have to be if they had to deal with someone like Chrysalis on a regular basis.
Besides, this pony didn’t merit any words from her anyway. He was but a lowly guard, she was a princess. And he wasn’t even a changeling. Talking to him in this situation was unthinkable.
So Psithyra sat there in her cell in stony silence, with only the sound of her breathing to shake the quiet. She could feel the eyes of Frigid Night on her, but she didn’t really care. In three days the city would be consumed by a calamitous frenzy, and there wasn’t anything the ponies could do about it. Perhaps she might even be able to take advantage of all the chaos and escape herself.
Speaking of escaping, she wondered where Chrysalis was now. She hoped that the queen had made it back to the spa and was now safe. Surely if the ponies had recaptured her, they would give it away somehow. The fact that they were so grim and quiet about everything must mean that Chrysalis had gotten clean away. At least she had achieved that.
Frigid Night took out a stack of papers from inside his desk and began looking over them, occasionally glancing up to look at Psithyra, who stayed seated on the bed. There were no more attempts at conversation, as Frigid seemed to understand that she wasn’t going to talk to him.
After an indeterminable amount of time, Psithyra heard the sound of the doors to the dungeons open again. This time it sounded like a whole parade of ponies was coming down, judging by the thundering of hoof-falls.
As it turned out, it was more than Psithyra had initially expected. Striding into view of her cage was none other than eight Eclipse Guards and Shining Armor himself, all wearing their finest battle regalia. Psithyra snorted softly in spite of herself. Eight elite guards and the captain of the lot here to see one disarmed and disabled prisoner. She must really have spooked them with her earlier display.
Captain Armor stopped in front of Psithyra’s cell, staring at her. Psithyra stared right back at him, daring him to blink.
Finally. Someone worth speaking to.
After ten seconds of this, Shining Armor cleared his throat. “I assume you know who I am,” He said bluntly.
Ah. So it was going to be like this. Fine, Psithyra thought. She could play their game for now.
“I do,” Psithyra replied calmly, her voice vibrating dual like her elder sister’s. “You seem to have recovered from Queen Chrysalis’s influence.”
This made Shining Armor bristle slightly.
“To think that the queen almost took over your kingdom with a simple trick. And she would’ve had it too if not for those meddling ponies. All from a single flick of deception anypony could’ve seen through. Ah, but even you couldn’t, could you? That tells me how much you really know about your wife.”
Captain Armor was good at disguising his displeasure, but she could taste his emotions rolling in through the bars of her cell. That wasn’t magic, that was just one of her senses, and therefore wasn’t blocked by the enchantment of her cage.
“Where is Queen Chrysalis?” Shining Armor asked, stepping closer to the cell. “I know you came here to break her out of prison.”
Psithyra quietly considered this question.
“Queen Chrysalis is far away from here. Far from you. She can be anything or anypony; she’ll disappear, blend in. You’ll never find her unless she wants you to.”
The one called Frigid Night had put his papers down and trotted over. “We’ve found her before. We’ll find her again.”
“I find that… unlikely,” Psithyra drawled, hoping she sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Her infiltrators would do their best and keep her sister out of trouble, but Chrysalis still technically outranked them and could choose to ignore them. Psithyra sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t, otherwise this entire venture would have been for nothing.
“All right,” Shining Armor seemed to think that there wasn’t any more point to pursuing this line of conversation. “Fine. I still have questions. About you, actually.”
“How exciting,” Psithyra fake yawned. “Ask away, Prince Charming. I might choose to answer. I might not.”
“Let’s start with a name,” Shining Armor continued after clearing his throat. “You’re unlike the regular changeling. You look more like your queen. What is your name?”
“Are you asking me out?” Psithyra tittered. “Still, as I am being asked by someone of equal station, I suppose I should answer.”
“Equal station?” One of the Eclipse guards muttered.
“You’ve just married a princess,” Psithyra pointed out tiredly, as if having to explain something very obvious to someone who was very dull. “That makes you a prince, does it not?”
“So you are a princess, then?” Frigid Night deduced. “A princess of the changelings.”
“That would mean she is the younger sister of the queen,” the Eclipse Guard with the weird accent declared. “This is no normal changeling we have here.”
Psithyra brought her hooves together and clapped three times sarcastically. “Bravo. Truly, a sharper group of pony minds was never assembled until now.”
“So you snuck in. Likely transformed into various ponies to get past security to free your sister.” Frigid Night began trotting along the cell door. “You got her out, we know that much. Your combat prowess is that of somepony that has trained all their life to accomplish their goal. No normal changeling can perform the way you did. Impressive, I must say, but… what’s more impressive is that your goal was not to kill. You simply knocked out our guards.”
“Again. Astute observation skills,” Psithyra mocked.
“The question is… why?” Shining Armor narrowed his eyes. “Why would you fight not to harm my troops? If your goal was to escape with your life, why risk hitting my ponies with the blunt side of your weapon?”
Psithyra pictured her weapon and wondered where they had kept it. They were at least smart enough not to put it on the table across from her cell, but without a doubt they would have placed it in their armory, a location she could easily reach once she was out of here.
Psithyra turned her head to the side a few inches. “Would you have preferred that I had fought to kill? Is that what you want from me?”
“What? No! Not at all,” Shining Armor looked taken aback. “I’m just wondering why you didn’t do the same thing Queen Chrysalis did to our search party. Given your similarities.”
At this, Psithyra sniffed derisively at the guard captain. “I am not my sister.”
“That I can see. Something tells me you’re… more calm and reasonable. Tell me, are you?”
“That depends on the manner of our discussion,” Psithyra replied. Three days and this whole place would come crashing down. Three days. She could wait. In the meantime she might as well entertain herself with the ponies while she could.
“If you’re this good, why take orders from her?” The Eclipse guard inched closer. “You could be the one in charge with your given skillset and power.”
“Because that would be completely wrong,” Psithyra eyed the guard haughtily. “Would you take over your commander simply because someone else thought you were more skilled?”
Nopony said a thing about that.
“What is it that you want?” Frigid was the next to speak. “What do you hope to gain by taking Canterlot? Is it not better to live in harmony? Changelings feed on love. If you were to come to us bearing friendship, our kinds could live peacefully together.”
Psithyra rolled her eyes again. “That,” she said. “Is a typical pony idea. The Changeling Queen’s mind works a bit differently from your own, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
"Yes…" Shining Armor agreed. "We still haven't figured out how she managed to get as far as she did with impersonating my wife. But would it be wrong for me to say that you had a hoof in it?"
Psithyra said nothing.
“And am I wrong to assume you have a hideout somewhere in town?” he continued. “Somewhere to establish a base of operations? I had my inklings when the Eclipse guard came back with their findings.”
"Does it look like anyone else is here?" Psithyra scoffed. "It's just me; every other changeling got blasted away by the love wave. Nobody else cared about the queen enough to risk their lives to come get her. That's my responsibility as a princess of the hive."
“You risked your life and your identity to rescue her, yes. But your queen left you to us and escaped.” Frigid Night flipped through a few sheets of parchment. “I’d say it’s not really two-sided now, is it? Why do you pledge yourself to somepony who clearly cares nothing for anypony but herself?”
Psithyra looked Frigid straight in the eyes with her frostiest stare.
"Because she is my queen. As a soldier yourself, you should understand that."